How LEGO Serious Play can refocus and reenergise your workplace
Written by Sue Johnsohn, director of Superaddivity
A recent Sunday times article cited that on average we spend 27 per cent of our working day in some form of a meeting. That’s 13.6 meetings a week (up from 7.5 in 2019).
Think back to the last meeting. Did it go really well or were people on their phones catching up on emails, opening the door to Amazon or holding bi-lateral discussions?
How about the roles people were taking? Were the extroverts dominating the meeting, the introverts metaphorically “switching off” as they were struggling to get their point or across? Were colleagues disengaging when the agenda drifted off point?
If you are fed up of playing Calendar Tetris and ineffective team meetings than consider using LEGO Serious Play (LSP) to redesign your workplace.
LSP is a system where teams build three-dimensional models to help them think differently and creatively about how to solve a challenge.
The process of building models or artefacts which represent peoples’ thoughts, opinions, ideas is a psychologically safe method to gain understanding of the current state, providing a platform to define a shared action plan of how to move forward.
A workshop starts with individual model builds linked to the key ‘challenge question’.
This could be ‘Build me a model of one action we could take to make our meetings more effective’ or ‘Build me a model of what a successful team meeting outcome would be’.
A blueprint (shared model) is then created of all the ideas, themes are grouped, blockers identified and an action plan created.
You may think – we could do that with post it notes and a flipchart, but the difference with LSP is:
1 The learning sticks - Everyone has an input into the shared model, driving accountability and action.
2 Unleash creativity - By building ducks, towers or stories about themselves, participants quickly learn the skills to model complex ideas, using creativity to solve problems.
3 Level the playing field - LEGO Serious Play recognises that leaders don't have all the answers, so it levels the playing field in a team.
4 Creates psychological safety - LEGO Serious Play is about listening with your eyes and ears. Everybody builds, everybody tells stories, everybody listens and contributes.
5 Highly engaging and fun - The process of having a pile of LEGO in front of them draws people in and puts a smile on their face.
Workshops vary from two hours to a full day, depending on the complexity of the question and depth of action plan required.
A stronger team with a clear action plan of what they will do individually and as a team over the next 24 hours, week and month to cement the behaviour changes which drive effective meetings.
It’s a bit like cyber security or health and safety, effective meetings is a skill to be trained, reinforced and practiced to bring to life the workplace – unlocking more time for growing business, talent, customer relationships